


Duality

by Andrina_Nightshade



Series: Andrina's Canonverse Short Fics [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dark Rey (Star Wars), Empress Rey, F/M, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Imprisonment, Intimate partner cruelty, Non Reylo character death, Non-Canonical Character Death, Non-Graphic Violence, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-15
Updated: 2020-03-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:20:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23161624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Andrina_Nightshade/pseuds/Andrina_Nightshade
Summary: The Empress Palpatine has taken her place on the Sith Throne, with Supreme Leader Kylo Ren at her feet. But Ben Solo remembers the woman she once was...
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: Andrina's Canonverse Short Fics [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1989178
Comments: 7
Kudos: 59





	Duality

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired in part by the set photos of Daisy Ridley as "Dark Rey" on the Sith throne. A much bleaker ending to TROS.

Sometimes, Ben could still see the ghost of the woman he loved in her eyes. A little smile in her unguarded moments, not the sneer of cold contempt she so often wore. Or in the squeeze of his hand as she sat upon her throne. Or her hand tucking a stray hair behind his ear. Or a kiss that is a little softer, more tender than usual.

Last night, she had awoken from the throes of a nightmare, eyes glistening and cheeks wet with her tears. He had gathered her into his arms, let her sob against his bare chest, and caressed her back with slow strokes until the maelstrom had receded.

The eyes that gazed back at him, alight with love, were not those of the Supreme Empress of the Final Order.

They were _Rey’s_ eyes.

Then, he watched their warmth evaporate, until only the cold steel of the Empress remained.

His heart twisted painfully as she distangled herself from his embrace. “A minor indiscretion,” she had said in that listless, almost metallic tone. “Go back to sleep, Ren.” And she had rolled over and left him alone in their too large bed, clutching at her fading warmth in sheets.

* * *

Some days, Kylo Ren can feel Ben Solo pushing through the cracks. He sneers. A weak, pathetic boy, clinging to the failed ideals of a dead world. Begging for the scraps of love from a family who did not want to understand him, from a woman who rejected him and _always_ reached for her saber first.

Kylo Ren has no need for him.

Kylo Ren has all he has ever desired, and more.

He kneels before the Supreme Empress; he kneels not in fear or supplication. He kneels because it pleases her. She is the only master he will accept, a bondage wanted. She binds him not with lightning nor chains nor pain. She binds him with her passion, lets him drink of her lips, her very essence. He has killed for her. He would die for her – and she would permit him without hesitation. He does not have to beg for _crumbs_ of affection - she is his, and he is hers.

The galaxy bows before them – the Supreme Empress and her consort. Beautiful, terrible, treacherous. The dizzying power of their dyad, the intoxication of the dark side of the Force, and the might of their armies.

They are beloved only by each other. That is enough – they feast on the terror of a galaxy at their mercy.

* * *

The Empress watches her rebel prisoner writhe and contort in agony. She is deaf to the piercing howls which reverberate in her throne room, the crackle of the lightning she emits from her fingers. Ennui paints her face – she might be listening to the recitation of obscure Naboo tax laws or the complex plays of a Dejarik board.

Then, she flicks her wrist. There is a sickening _snap_ , and the screams die.

Two of her Praetorian guards step forth, and red arms drag the body away.

She will repeat the spectacle tomorrow. And the next day. And the next.

Kylo Ren has little time for torture – when properly wielded, he had found it a useful weapon for gleaming information. Double agents, rebel movements, whispered plans, base locations. But torture for tortures’ sake leaves an arid taste on his tongue.

He rises from his kneeling position at her feet. His knees groan in protest, but a lifetime of schooling his features hides the ache.

But not from her.

He offers his hand to the Empress as she rises, the leather of their gloves creaking as she grips him. “Pain, Ren?” she says coolly, and regards him with a dispassionate eye. “Shall I have my guards fetch you a cushion?” She laughs, a sound hollow and chilling him down to his marrow. “The mighty Kylo Ren – feeling the first twinge of infirmity and obsolescence.”

* * *

Later that night, breaths slowing and skin cooling after their shared passions, she will kiss his kneecaps, only the briefest graze of lips. In that moment, she is Rey and he is Ben, and he can see a shining way out of the dark path for both of them.

Then, she will mock him once more.

* * *

Every so often, he makes a sojourn down to the cells.

They are increasingly empty now.

In the infancy of her reign, the Empress had purged the Resistance, with the ruthless efficiency of a surgeon lancing a wound. Rebellion was purulence, and she expunged it. Kylo Ren had watched as she toyed with them, tortured them, and slaughtered them,

Ben Solo watched, paralysed, as countless friends of his parents, brave and defiant heroes, faces from his childhood, were struck down. Harter Kalonia. Norra Wexley. Wedge Antilles. All snuffed out in an instant after hours of pain and cruelty.

_Lando Calrissian._

Ben Solo had truly broken free in those moments, hearing the tormented cries. Uncle Lando had not allowed his courage to falter, keeping up with easy and cocksure manner in between bouts of Force lightning.

Ben had fallen to the floor before the Empress, entreated her, begged her… and she had paused her ministrations only long enough to pierce the old gambler’s chest with her saber. The flash of red on Lando’s face, that look of absolute betrayal burns even now in Ben Solo’s mind…

He had rewarded her by retching on the floor of the throne room.

“You killed Han Solo – your father – with less hesitation,” she told him in a voice rich with poison. “Get out of my sight.”

It was a week before she touched him again, kissed him again. Kylo Ren had ensnared that traitorous part of himself, muzzled in the corner, and begged for some scrap of affection. She relented – the softest brush of her bare fingers to his cheek – and he was lost. 

When her love and touch is his reward, he will always lose.

* * *

Once, she was a luminous presence in the Force, blinding and beautiful as a supernova. Now, there is only inky blackness, crackling with raw power. There is no soul, only darkness.

But still, something of Rey must remain.

Kylo waves off the Stormtrooper guard with a flick of his wrist. The durasteel panel slides open, and he enters the cell. His face is steeled with the roar of rage he has come to expect from his prisoner.

When he is greeted instead by an impotent whimper, Ben Solo is able to escape.

Chewbacca remains in chains. There is dried blood in the fur at his neck, matted and filthy. He had tried to escape again, and injured three troopers before he was sedated into submission. His fur is increasingly grey, and he his shoulders slump dejectedly.

The Empress wanted to eliminate the old - and new - guard of the Resistance. What remains of _Rey_ cannot bear to cut down this last idol, this final pillar.

They talk sometimes, Ben and Chewie. Of a young scavenger whose breath caught in her chest at the first sight of a forest. Who caught the rainfall in her hand and smiled brighter than a nebula. Who ate with her fingers, never hiding her boundless joy of the taste and texture of _real_ food: who sighed at the tang of jogan fruit, the satisfying crunch of fresh bread, and yelped at the first taste of spice. The girl with loving hands who would grasp his paw in awe, and whisper her fears and hopes to him in the cockpit of the _Falcon_.

Rey of Jakku had loved Chewbacca. Empress Palpatine, whilst she might chain him, will never raise her own hand to him in violence. Each hair, limp, dirty and neglected, is safe from her.

It doesn’t matter. She has strangled his heart, and Chewbacca will not survive this pain much longer.

Selfishly, Ben wants him to hold on.

“ _I can still save her… Please, please don't leave me alone... I can still save her."_

* * *

Kylo Ren approaches a different cell today. Prisoner FN-2187 – the man who calls himself Finn. The man whose eyes have never ceased their burning rage, whose spine stiffens every time Kylo enters the room.

Finn tells Ren that he can withstand any torture.

Finn does not know that he is not the one being tortured.

A familiar torrent of words fly. “You made her do this, you monster! You’re controlling her! Rey would never-“

But Kylo only shakes his head.

He had once offered his hand to a scavenger turned nascent Jedi; offered her the galaxy, power, agency and she had turned his inheritance upon him in anger. She had turned _him_ down.

The Empress had not taken power for him. She had done it to save her rebel _family –_ and in doing so, lost that of herself which cared for them. She had sacrificed herself for them.

It was only the shard of Rey in her heart keeping them alive.

He fears what will happen when that last candle is snuffed out.

* * *

He visits the Haysian engineer today; the one whose rage, even after these weeks and months, has never quieted.

She has more thorns than any Rose he has ever encountered before. He deserves her barbs, every word. He deserves to bleed, and she is only too willing to pierce him.

Rose uses anger as her fuel. In other life, she and Kylo Ren might have been kindred spirits.

In another life, Rose Tico, Rey of Jakku and Ben Solo might have been friends.

She asks after Finn, always.

Sher asks after Dameron, and that irritant BB-unit. The Empress had considered having it taken apart for scraps – but something in its mechanical whine, in the tilt of its head, had stalled her.

Reprogramming the droid would have been easy enough. If the last Jedi, that embodiment of goodness and hope, the desert flower who was kind and selfless despite her harsh and deprived upbringing, would fall and rise again as the Empress of the Sith, inserting a new loyalty chip into the BB unit would be easy enough.

Yet, something flickered in her eyes when this was suggested. Ben Solo (for he was more Ben Solo than Kylo Ren on that day) had dared to hope that maybe, _maybe_ Rey wasn’t lost after all, but silently clawing her way through the darkness of the Sith within her.

But she did not expel the poison.

She remained the Supreme Empress.

* * *

It had taken him weeks to understand why she had left _Poe Dameron_ alive.

In her previous life, the two had little more than tolerance for one another. Sparking barbs, cynicism, but none of the _love_ she had for Chewie, or Finn, or Rose. He was an aggravation. More than that, as a commander in the Resistance, his would be a fine head to mount as proof of her absolute conquest.

One day, Ben Solo understood. The Empress had not kept Dameron alive out of any lingering sentiment towards him.

She did not want to hurt the droid with his death.

* * *

She burned a star system that day instead. Chandrilla fell, and those few who remained Ben Solo, the troubled Prince who would become Kylo Ren, died in the inferno of their planet.

* * *

She grows paler each day. Once, her skin was golden from the harsh kiss of sunlight; now, she is anaemic, ashen as the corpse fingers of her grandfather.

She has not touched her consort with gentleness in days. Oh, she will still devour him in passion; but when he tries to tuck a stray curl behind her ear, she slaps his hand away. No gentle kisses, no soft caresses.

Yet, he watches her as she sits atop her throne. He sees the hand that drifts to her abdomen, and caresses the hint of a bump there. She loves _them_ , the lives they have created within her. For Kylo Ren… for Ben Solo… that has to be _enough_.

* * *

He is Ben Solo more than Kylo Ren these days. He feels the vice-like grip of failure around his heart. Shame burns in his blood as he surveys what they have become.

_Leia Organa did not die for this._

_Luke Skywalker did not die for this._

_Han Solo did not die for this._

But he _cannot_ break free – not for his own sake, for he would gladly welcome the oblivion. He wishes, in his darkest dreams, that she had truly killed him on the ruins of Kef Bir. Left him there to die – Kylo Ren, Ben Solo or whatever halfway in between man he was in those moments.

It would have been mercy. He would not be living with the shame of failing to save her,

 _No._ His short-lived redemption had not been for her. He had turned for himself. He was the Ben Solo he should always have been. Saving him had never been her responsibility, and perhaps the reverse was true.

He had not failed Rey.

But there were two whom he could still fail.

* * *

The Empress sleeps; fitfully, but she sleeps nonetheless.

Ben's hands tremble as he places them over her ripe belly. There is a pulse of warmth as his children recognize their father.

_The last Skywalkers._

She nurtures them with her body. He will nurture them with his soul, his love. They will be powerful – the scion of two prestigious bloodlines – but he will not allow corruption to infect them, as it has infected her. As once infected him. 

He will _always_ protect them. Even from her.

Once, she had told Luke Skywalker that Ben Solo was their last hope.

Ben Solo, twice fallen, once redeemed. He was no saviour.

Their true last hopes sleep contentedly within her womb. If Darth Vader could be pulled into the light by love for his child…

The Empress stirs, her hand coming up to cover his where it rests over their slumbering children. “Ben…”

That name… He sees her smile, and covers her lips with his own. A soft kiss. And maybe, even as she pulls away and her voice grows cold with talk of conquest and violence, Ben Solo dares to hope that Rey is not lost after all.

_I can still save her…_


End file.
